Composite materials reinforced such by textile or filamentary structures such as woven glass fibre fabrics and woven carbon fibre fabrics, have been used for machine parts requiring strength, such as in aircraft, automobiles, railroad vehicles and ships, and as structural building members. Further, composite materials, such as carbon fibre/carbon matrices, grapite fibre/carbon matrices and graphite fibre/graphite matrices, have been used for machine parts requiring heat resistance to above 1000.degree. C.
Such composite materials reinforced by textile or filamentary structures, are light in weight and physically and chemically strong and they are valued for their usefulness in diverse fields.
The strength characteristics of such composite materials (for example, carbon-carbon composite) depend largely on the construction of a textile or filamentary structure incorporated in a matrix as a reinforcing base material, for example, as a woven fabric body. Thus, such textile structures have their constructions selected to maximise their filament content and diversity, as disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 57-176232 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,904,464, in order to increase the strength of the finished or resultant composite materials. These known textile or filamentary structures, however, each have numerous filament ends exposed, typically in their cut state, at the fabric end or side edge surfaces, with the result that, when the textile structure is impregnated with thermosetting resin, filaments become dislodged, leading to the textile or filamentary structure losing its shape. It may thus be necessary to apply a subsequent mechanical cutting operation to the mis-shaped portion, after the setting of the resin, in order to remove that mis-shapen portion, which severely undermines both the economy of usage of sources or ingredient material and production.
Furthermore, the production of a composite material which is complicated in shape poses another problem, namely that of the strength being decreased owing to the shape or contour involved.